Qualcomm, Samsung and Hynix lead the BOM parade. The most expensive section of the Droid is the baseband applications processor at a cost of .40, accounting for 19.2 per cent of the smart phone’s total BOM. This section is dominated by Qualcomm’s baseband integrated circuit that has the Snapdragon processor.

Coming in at a close second in terms of expense is the touchscreen display at a cost of .20, or 19.1 per cent of the total. The AMOLED display portion of this subsystem is supplied by Samsung Mobile Display Company.

Next in the ranking is the memory section, at a cost of .80 and accounting for 18.2 per cent of the tab. In the handset torn down by Isuppli, this section consists of NAND flash memory and mobile DDR DRAM from Samsung Electronics and more NAND from Hynix Semiconductor. However, Isuppli believes that HTC is likely using additional sources of supply for these commodity memory parts.

Pricing for components found inside of equipment is determined using Isuppli’s component price tracker service. It provides detailed information on costs for more than 350 components commonly found in electronic equipment, allowing Isuppli to develop its BOM estimates.

The teardown assessment accounts only for hardware and manufacturing costs and does not take into consideration other expenses such as software, licensing, and royalties. µ